Abused By Illusions

“A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it.”

So declared George W. Bush in July 2001, just weeks prior to 9/11. This was at least the third occasion on which Mr. Bush spoke wistfully, in public and on the record, about exercising dictatorial powers.

Once would be a lame joke; twice, a symptom of a seriously impaired sense of humor. Three times, however, is suggestive of seriously malevolent intentions. In our system of government, which remains in form – if not in practice – a constitutional republic, chief executives simply do not joke about dictatorial ambitions.

Here's a useful parallel. It is a serious federal offense even to joke about wanting to kill the President of the United States. Doing so even one time is sufficient to provoke a visit from the Secret Service. Were someone to do so three times, he would almost certainly face prosecution, as well as an invasive psychological evaluation.

Shouldn't it be considered just as grave an offense for a president, who swore an oath in God's name to uphold our Constitution, to make jokes about murdering our republic in order to erect a dictatorship?

We now know that Mr. Bush wasn't merely repeating one of his favorite thigh-slappers. In the hours immediately following the 9/11 attacks, the legal alchemists in Mr. Bush's court sought to transmute his insipid, adolescent joke into a tangible reality.

Of course, the assumption that Bush can wield quasi-dictatorial powers has been woven into the extravagant claims he and his underlings have made regarding the supposedly illimitable “Commander-in-Chief” authority permitting him to imprison people at will, wage aggressive war without a congressional declaration, order illegal surveillance of American citizens, and otherwise do pretty much anything he is not explicitly forbidden by Congress to do. That is the gravamen of The Powers of War and Peace, John Yoo's book-length brief on behalf of the Bush regime's doctrine of unfettered executive power. As a second-tier functionary in the regime's legal directorate, Yoo was a primary author of that doctrine.

But thanks to a badly overdue disclosure offered by former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, we now have a better understanding of just how arrogantly lawless the Bush regime has become. In a December 23 Washington Post op-ed column that was prompted by the unfolding “Snoopgate” scandal, Daschle testifies that the Senate specifically denied to the Bush regime the plenary powers it now claims were given to it.

Read the full story at The New American!

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